About ASAP

Growing Minds is a program of Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. ASAP’s mission is to help local farms thrive, link farmers to markets and supporters, and build healthy communities through connections to local food.

Curriculum

Learn how to work with our youngest authors by creating a supportive and encouraging environment that can energize them to create using text. The author provides step by step instructions on setting up an age appropriate writing workshop with units that cover how to form ideas, structure the text, and even develop illustrations that nourish children’s creativity.

Big Ideas provides teachers, kindergarten through high school, ideas on how to educate their students about food, culture, health, and the environment. Using the four perspectives it lays out steps on how to educate students on food and food systems.

This curriculum, developed by the University of California Botanical Garden Programs alongside local school districts and youth organizations, presents itself as a life science unit for grades k-4 that explores the plants we eat. With eight lessons that include dissections, tastings, diagrams, experiments, investigative questions and reflection questions, students will take their first steps to becoming food scientists!

An inquiry-based science and nutrition program developed by the Teachers College at Columbia University, this curriculum is divided into units that teach students about science by studying their own diet and activity choices. The curriculum includes background information and assessment tools to help students apply what they learn to their personal health choices.

This English and Spanish language curriculum guide includes a Student Food Journal to go alongside all the lesson plans. The lesson plans are meant for children to get hands-on experience with food while integrating language, math, science and social studies for grades 2-3.

This English and Spanish language curriculum guide includes a Student Food Journal to go alongside all the lesson plans. The lesson plans are meant for children to get hands-on experience with food while integrating language, math, science and social studies for grades 4-6.

This English and Spanish language curriculum guide comes with a Student Food Journal to go alongside all the lesson plans. The lesson plans are meant for children to get hands-on experience with food while integrating language, math, science and social studies for grades K-1.

This guide is meant to help communities or schools get started with a garden, from fundraising and having an initial meeting, to breaking ground and activities involving youth. The case studies of school and community gardens around the United States show how connecting children to the earth is so important for their education.

Designed to get children out of their traditional indoor environment, Naturalist Intelligence is a curriculum that focuses on having students build observation, collection, analysis, and communication skills to become scientists within their school playground.

This twenty-four lesson nutrition curriculum for preschoolers emphasizes six specific colorful vegetables to promote healthier eating at home and school. Early chapters also provide a resource for educators to develop a school plot or container garden as well as details on how to get families involved.